Tag Archives: Sorrow

Rolled Away Stones

Posted on by

7

on this morning grey
just before the dawn
wakes up shell-pink, sleepy
and pokes out her head
from heathery hillsides

i think about stones
that choke every grave’s throat
to seal in what died
and ward we the living
from death’s steely touch.

hopes, dreams, and best efforts
shipwrecked relationships
killed by the sword-thrusts
of one-eyed sword masters
who wield their tongue cruel
and sharper than death
to slaughter what’s wounded
in time and by tears
and the enemy capers
in Opposite-joy….indifferences, sicknesses
unto death both
end up in the grave
and stones are placed there
to protect us here.

but today I wander
thru fields wet and wild
I press past the burrs
and the thorns in the thunder
to find the grey gravestones
so stolid and still
just over that hill…

and rolled away stones
never cease to amaze me
because they will not budge
when I lean on them
or when I lean on Them…

the work of a Digger
the work of a Builder
the work of a Healer
the work of a Surgeon
the work of a Lover

Rolled Away Stones

Why We Must Honor the Trans Lives We’ve Lost Without Telling the Living They’re Doomed — Everyday Feminism

Posted on by

4

Why We Must Honor the Trans Lives We’ve Lost Without Telling the Living They’re Doomed — Everyday Feminism.

I am begging you all to read this.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like inside when I, who have never felt more present, more alive, more legitimate, hear that other people say that I have died, or that they consider me dead.

It’s a worse feeling than despair.  It’s repudiation mixed with invalidation and poured over indifference and then shoved into my throat.

It’s at that point that the thoughts of making that statement true begin to assail and assault…like there is this feeling of well okay if that’s what they think then let’s just finally let it happen and in that congruence let them have a real comparison.

People say that suicide is the ultimate selfish act…maybe.  Certainly this is something I have thought about a lot.  But is it the ultimate selfish act?

What about the act of policing someone with the withdrawal of relationship and then acting like they are dead and they “betrayed”?  Is that act selfish?  Ultimate?

It sure feels like it is at least petulant and petty.

But hey, those are the feelings of a dead girl…and since I am considered dead what do they matter…and since I am considered dead why would anyone even notice when I am gone…right?

Yes…I am using absurdity to illustrate the absurd.  But please:  don’t tell me I should stick around and then punch me in the face of my tender hurting heart.

I am pretty sure I have pressed other things similar to this article…in my opinion it should be pressed by every wordpress blogger until it stops.tumblr_ndg1500IZT1qb4hiyo1_1280

On Being Friends With Jesus

Posted on by

3

As I sat in the hard wooden pew, enjoying its solid familiarity and reassuring simplicity, I listened to the preacher talk about the swirl of events that ran unchecked during the last several days before Jesus met death face to face on the backside of the Cross.

I heard him tell of Jesus warning everyone around Him that He was going to the place of the skull, to get a death-grip on suffering and never let go, and then to eat it…all.  I heard him tell of how Jesus warned that anyone who wanted to be His friend had to come with Him, had to see, had to get a belly-ache too…

…and I was off in my thoughts, back, back back to those days and I heard the sounds of cattle and crowds, tasted heat and dust and slid sideways through the slant orange light from a beating throbbing insistent sun.

I was in the house of Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus their sickly brother, and Mama was telling me that these were the very best friends of Jesus.

They had chosen Him…they liked Him…as a person.  His humor and tenderness, His wrestle with being called a bastard His entire life when He was more True-Son than any of us, back then anyway.  Now?  Well the Adoption Agency is open for business…but that story is presaged by this one…this story of what it was like being friends with Jesus.

Jesus always was about another story, in everything He did.  Each encounter, each miracle, each glance was full of metaphor and creative import, was a beam or a brick in this House that He began then and is still working on even now.

So He is befriended by these…perhaps parents long lost to death and tragedy…and He has decided that it will be His closest friends that He will entrust His priceless gift to:  the understanding of Resurrection.

You realize, don’t you, that understanding a thing means knowing its front and its back, and it by definition means knowing what that thing is not.  So let’s recall what happened to these, the best friends of the Shepherd.

One of them becomes very sick…Lazarus…who was never that strong anyway.  He had to live with his sisters, one of whom was of a strength so as to make Patton seem like Gomer Pyle, and one of whom was gifted with such sight as to make Joan of Arc seem like Helen Keller.

Formidable…and in that patriarchy, a sick and weak man who had to be cared for by his sisters was held in contempt and thought to be of no consequence…except to Jesus.  To Him, this family was the one that would together take that voyage across the river Styx…and back again.

The sisters immediately send word.  Martha marshals forces and gets the message to Jesus faster than the telegraph that would come along centuries later…and Mary sends word thru the heart currents which brought the knowing immediately to Jesus and added such sorrow to His already increasingly agonizing heart.

And Jesus, knowing the Father was doing a work of instruction, answered to everyone in earshot that they would tarry where they were.  Which shocked everyone, for it was well known that Jesus had a deep affection for the weak and unadmirable Lazarus (which of course made them all even more leery of this odd carpenter!), and everyone figured He would fold space and high tail it up to Bethany to heal His friend.

But He waited.

And everyone wondered if there had been a falling out…in fact Martha was certain that Jesus was angry with her…and Mary was certain that Jesus was disappointed in her…and Lazarus, well, he felt like Jesus’ companionship was good while it lasted but was too good to be true.

But inside Himself, Jesus ached for His Beloved True Friends.  Because He was going to use them to make a bigger point…and it was going to break their Hearts…so they could be healed even stronger.

One day passed by, and He waited (foreshadowing another dark day coming).
The next day came and went (and the second day was prophesied of then).
And on the third day, the sun rose and dawn fell flat on her face in the silent still absurdity of an absent best friend (just to be sure that the coming 3rd day would stand in stark contrast).

Oh there was still hubbub and the frothy surface dwellers all held out hope like icing called dinner…but Jesus was not having any of that either!

“Lazarus is dead.”  He said this…flatly, tonelessly.  Expressionless…like the voice of the grave itself.

And then He started His journey to their house…to face them.  To face their agony, their confusion.  To face their betrayal and let down.  To face the accusations hidden in their bewilderment about His absence.

Constance…I refer you to John 11 when you are done reading this post, for there are a few things He said that are vertical things that stretch from the bottom of beneath eternity to the top of the beyond eternity.  They are worth contemplating for a year or two…but stay with me here…

…because to everyone else around Him it just sounded like Wwah Wwah Wwah and Yadda Yadda Yadda…even to Himself, His human ears, it sounded thus.

He spoke in faith.

And then He had to face Martha Patton…and then Mary Arc…and Mary said to Him, with my voice, your voice, the voice of Rachael in Rama… “Lord, where were You?”.

And He wept.  Bitterly.  Deeply.

Why?  Because His lesson was manifest now…on the fourth day since Lazarus had died…one more day than The Third Day…and the very first day beyond that Third Day which was the first day of a forever separation from their beloved brother for His surviving besties Martha and Mary.

And then He called Lazarus forward from death, back across the river, back to the land of the living and the loving arms of his sisters…and his True Friend as well.

All around Him, people marvelled, rejoiced, and then wept in relief and reunion and resurrection.

But Jesus?  He still wept in sorrow, for He knew the full weight of the pain He had knowingly inflicted on His best friends…He knew the looming agony that was fast falling towards Him, and He knew that He had no shield against it, no weapon to fight it with, only faith in His Father for Whom He had embraced this Mission Impossible, and that promise that Father would bring everything out of death with this Obedient Son.

Jesus wept because He knows that He does His friends dirty because He can trust them to see it thru to the end, past Friday and into Sunday.  It hurts Him that it hurts them…it hurts Him that He does it anyway because it is the Ultimate Good and overarching Impartation of Eternity…thru broken hearts and broken spirits.

I came back to myself, and the sermon was drawing to a close.  I had a fresh perspective on my life, my agonies, and the lessons that have been shown forth.

I think I am going to continue, seeking to be a friend of God.  Because everyone has sorrow and trial, everyone goes thru meaningless suffering and horror…but it seems the friends of God get to have the Presence of God with them midst the fires of pain’s crucible, and the Kingdom is birthed.

Much Love,
Charissa…an aspiring Bestie of Godtumblr_nk38t5CTqL1smw1wso1_r1_500

Suicide Bonfire

Posted on by

3

By the dawn’s early light
I see the faint track of passing deer
o’ershadowed by padding soft cougar prints,
and I leave behind what I so proudly hailed,
my back to that last twilight gleaming, my last one
I shall endure, or ever see.

I have conceded the fight fraught with perils
and I have left the path, to follow the trail,
the last trail, flag finally furled forever,
victim of futility and vain imagination.

I think it’s better this way, following the trail
of animals, far off the beaten human track
because that way I will not be found
or ever tracked out, and the last horror
will not be me blasted or bloated or slashed or purple

it will be a simple, puzzling absence.

The morning is blazing, gleams of blue and grey,
the air crisper and cleaner than a gunshot crack
and the beauty rolls from ridge to ridge
and my eyes fill and smudge a smidge
in sorrow and relief.

I’ll never see you again, but that is not a thing
cus hey, I haven’t seen you thru the night
and have no proof you’re even still there,
I don’t even know if I’m still here, truth be told.

The going gets tougher, the trail drops away
and I am bushwhacking thru thick thorny
fierce frolics of Scotch Broom and poison oak.
I won’t be allergic, where I am going.

Finally I find the deep copse dark,
slick with shadows, layers laid lifeless
and freshly dead in morning, and I walk to
the deeps of the bowl and hunker.

Down.  Down.  Birds dart overhead in sound and glimpse.
Down. Down.  And spacious skies descend to gulp.
Down. Down.  And ancient hills crouch low and dusty.
and me, in the hollow, growing thin, bleeding out, feeding grasses
copper and salt, tears and surrender, and sorrow on the wind.

Time will pass and my flesh becomes the dust from whence it came
and my bones will still delay, waiting for a spark, waiting for
the Flint of God to strike them, tender tinder with me finally
gone in ghostly ever-swoon,
and there they ever burn, in the night, in memory
of all that we endured, and all we were denied
and all I hope to spare you from
with this bonfire, this bonefire
releasing me in conflagrating furies
in flight to the stars above
and this tragedy stupid, mute, dumb
finally finished.tumblr_ncw0xjvGW41rhrouno1_500

Unthinking Destruction

Posted on by

2

All is not well
here in Destruction

on twisting trash-strewn roads
traversing heart topography
of hurt, humiliation and
yes, hate…

roads the arteries and veins
pumping mammon’s blood in vain
and kicking at every knee…
all is not well
here, in me.tumblr_mqcqboZoNE1r2qaivo1_1280Storm clouds gather
around hard eyes,
flat, blank beneath,
seething inside
and then the sun
shines on those eyes

and I can see
behind those eyes,
lined with poverty like mascara
while calling it silver, but…

no redemption there,
nope, not, no
silver lining
there.tumblr_nkkxri27Cj1qzxg13o1_1280Lurking,
poised to pounce
from eyes straight into mouths,
unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling
unaware and empty,

lurking light                 (incarnate words)
so black and blank      (incarnate worlds),

darkened worlds of night,
down pitch-black alleys
reeking of menace
like a bad undertaker’s
over-liberal use of cheap cologne
to mask the smell of rot.

Then they speak at me
and words spark
from their lips like live coals,
like glowing tips of cigarettes
and sharp threatening glares
of drug pipes drawn deep
and harsh like sudden flares
and for split seconds
their illumined faces show to me
in that black light in that moment
I can truly see, past the blank indifference
and peer thru active hate
and around their lurking fear
and I can spot the person

that once lived shining,
feeling there.

It is late
and I am sick,
and drowsy,
I am sick,
and comfortable,

I am sick
and freaking out
in a world jarred
wide awake,
in a life,
a death,
a meal shared,
in this daily, physical reality
unchangedtumblr_naiywqJsea1twibaso1_1280But I hear
the whisper of a spider spinning
her web of promise,
and I catch
the sound of subterranean streams
and I remember
all is not quite what it seems.

See, I’m having these recurring dreams
that all was good from the beginning,
but then something went wrong,
oh so wrong and things
ain’t like they ought to be,
not for them and not for me…

and we dwell here,
drugged and deceived,
thinking that not-thinking is
the true sweaty work of unthinking!

Oh for the courage to unthink!

Unthinking the inevitability of sin,
unthinking the inevitability of violence,
unthinking the inevitability of exile,
unthinking the divisions,
unthinking the deceptions…

Oh to dwell in
Unthinking
Destructiontumblr_nkprrhiv9W1thfeewo1_500

 

 

A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…

Posted on by

2

houses of grey blank walls decked out in smooth rich wood
panels and pictures of picnics and parties…
banal bacchanalia, all splattered in Blood.

Beds of spikes, hidden neath down comforters,
and wool knitted afghans of colorful,
threatening sinister pattern.

Houses in neighborhoods bereft of neighbors,
each one is serving themselves and alone
in community of this alienation…and all is
destroyed by their own bloody hands…

the work of rough hands…even rougher grave throats.

Our eyes are still bloodshot from staring at visions
of genocide done that we didn’t see coming
but now we continue to watch, in foreboding

but hoping in vain that the cute lil houses
are what’s really real and not all the horror,
lurking beneath in destruction and gore.

we are really in fear and wondering…
what happens when a killer comes home,
or (gulp) even worse

if that killer had never left home?

what then?

what happens when victims
*widows orphans*

and murderers

look each other in the eyes again?

what then, and who blinks first and looks away in shame?

What are these wounds on your chest?
The wounds I received in the house of my friends.

What is greater:  the pain of being violated
or the bitter agony of forgiving?

a valley of dry bones cannot be forgotten
even in the face of forgiveness so costly.

This impossible for me to try to describe
or even conceive of apart from the cross of Christ.

Because forgiveness is also
it’s own rare and exquisite
form of great suffering.

And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit, no escape from the agony,
no pitstop from pain…
all we can do is exchange suffering’s form and it’s face,
from our own for the pain of another…
and us become willing to be bashed and broken
by those very ones we so desperately want
to reach out to and reconcile and leave pain behind.

This is the agony of a tortured soul wrestling
and a wrecked body there…offered in prayer
on the altar of sorrow…for the forgiveness
of torturers’ torments in this dank dark world
of violence and victims, laboring heavy
beneath weights unspeakable and even greater,
the weight of the cross.

And Him?  The Reproached?
The Betrayed, Who was Broken?
Him The Despised and King of All Criminals,
King of All Victims, King of All Shame?

Perhaps He knows of the path thru this valley
of broken dry bones full of dust, full of death.

Perhaps He can see those small signs of life
that are hidden from eyes filled with blood, hate and rage
and only seen by the eyes washed clean with tears
of repentance and wonder to look for our Spring

and the signs there so gentle
of a coming glad day of Resurrection…tumblr_ni0sfjatWG1qzq0kvo1_1280

Abandonment

Posted on by

7

You, long my nemesis and hater of my soul.
You’ve chilled my days and frozen all my long night’s coal
in hours of stark terror and silent desperate screams
on razor blades I’ve laid my stricken threatened head
thanks to your dark malevolent deadly ways…

abandonment.

You poisoner of my rivers flowing pure and oh so sweet,
you making dry my innocent new merry bubbling spring
and striking terror in my tender childlike heart
with zombie screams so savage, oh so hungry shrill,
and yet so silent and so baleful still
you emanate such evil dread and blackness toward me
and I am melted in my soul aghast,

abandoned.

Long have I searched and sought an exit, for the way
that leads me from your cruel torture chambers dark
un-swaddles me from all your reeking death clothes stark
and dank and damp and dripping with death’s poisonous remark,
slowly I turn my shivering and jittery back on you
while terror talks and walks straight up my frigid spine
and every vertebrae recoils in mortal fear
you creep pernicious up my frame like poison vine
but I am resolute because I want to gain
my freedom from your bottomless black empty jailer eyes
and rows of terrible sharp executioner teeth
and so it’s me, at last, it’s me that does you right…

I
abandon
you.

you horror,
you absolute
horror.

tumblr_nkpv05dYzb1rdfgw4o1_500

To those of you with mastery over your feelings…

Posted on by

3

…be merciful to those of us who don’t.

Either you are really strong and awesome, possessing all the skills of Siegfried and Roy combined with the Crocodile Hunter mixed together with Dr. Doolittle…

…or our feelings are Godzilla to your Gollum, and untameable.  And the fact that we are surviving speaks of unspeakable courage and persistence and never say die stubbornness…

either way, if you can master your feelings, take it easy on the rest of us mere mortals

 

“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”

Posted on by

9

Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans.  Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!!  🙂  ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…tumblr_n9h3hmA63y1sypuuko1_400

But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece.  And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.

You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.

Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.DSCN7014

You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.

We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.

So there is that.

This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.tumblr_mxydoeknpZ1saxfomo1_500

But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain.  He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children.  He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…

…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.enhanced-buzz-wide-819-1425685150-9

On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.

He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself!  It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!”  And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.

That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person.  It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way.  He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”.  And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”tumblr_nbmpahNSPo1r78unxo1_1280

See?  All about him.  His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.

Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts.  His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.

Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.

Twice.tumblr_nkp8l7TjAs1spq83no1_1280

And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man.  Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).

Constance…is this not something close to suicide?  Friendshipicide?  Is not this towering silence some sort of death?  Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?

And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…

“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”

Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t.  Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from.  But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective.  Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker.  Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.tumblr_mrl193edwJ1qm86t3o1_500

As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…

…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).

It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person.  You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes.  You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…tumblr_mcq1juZYxN1r2zs3eo1_1280

…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.

I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th).  It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.

And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”tumblr_n6u1weh7on1trxee1o1_1280

I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported.  I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.

…and as to men?  “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:

There’s no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men. All perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
Ah, where’s my man?—Give me some aqua vitae.—
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.tumblr_lvlbcphL9V1qeovheo1_500

Soft and Furious

Posted on by

3

words are all I have left,
soft and furious
like ocean waves
breaking on themselves
far out to sea
and lonely
because there are no rocks
to dash themselves ontumblr_nl3yxwcJaH1qz62xqo1_1280sometimes those words
get frozen inside my mouth
because everything around me
is cold and static
but the words are insistent
and well up inside me
soft and furioustumblr_nkibc3eZgO1r4d0svo1_r1_1280

 

In Hope of Dust and Ashes

Posted on by

2

We start this life with such bright expectation,
each sunrise morn of discovery and
each eventide of hope, our lifetime passes
and time flows like tides constantly in waves

that wash in over us, the same and ceaseless
yet we, in ever-new anticipation
that this new day is diff’rent, something yet
to be discovered in the shell-pink dawn,
we lift our hearts up cheery with bright song.tumblr_nkijfepxvE1s6fchho1_1280But there are ashes from the desperate fires
that we assemble in the long sloe nights
so cold upon those yawning yearning shores,
when stars hide behind black clouds of unknowing
and oceans hide in mists of dank despair,

and we are forced to burn all our Hosannas,
those palms fronds of our hopes so optimistic
waved innocent and arrogant and prideful
because we hadn’t seen the moon’s dark side.tumblr_njh7l88RC31tsumipo1_500We built frail fires from those brittle branches
and clutched at weak warmth, bathed in dim wan light
and marked ourselves with those imposéd ashes
and mourned those days we sang triumphantly
unknowing of the coming loss of all
our innocence in suffering…

and sorrowing…

and death and…

Ashes…ashes…
we all fall down…

and we are mindful of our common crown,
our destiny of dust wreathed round our foreheads,
that destiny of dust around our hearts,
that destiny of dust from which we came

and thus departed

that destiny of dust and our return…

to dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
dust returned…tumblr_mvt5wq6eGf1suq7neo1_500And it is only at this place, in ashes
after our hopes and dreams have burned to ash
and we have lost our hope and optimism
that we can finally see that stony path

and squinting, see the bloody foot-print outlines
left by the One who goes before our hearts,
the One who walks the Via Dolorosa
the One who, living, there lays down His Life,

the One who shows the way of self-denial
the way of sacrifice, relinquishment
entirely unnatural, the opposite
of every longing of our liquid hearts
that wants to feast upon self-preservation
and turn from bitter cups of self-denial…tumblr_ne0li72EJb1qgk7mfo1_1280And we must choose the place that we will walk:
the ceaseless shores of our naked ambition
and never finding ending place, or home?
Or…walk the path of ashes with this Shepherd
and lose our lives completely to His care
and thus spring from the ashes like a phoenix
leaps from the golden flames to live anew!

See, ashes are the opposite of owning
the mirror image of self-preservation,
the sign-post of the way of life He offers,
the insignia of the lifestyle that He models,
the mark He makes forever on His own
writ large in His own blood mixed with the ashes
of hopes consumed and dreams become dry dust!

This is the downward journey to the highest place victorious,
the deeps of Sabbath Rest and Victory Won.tumblr_njn61sFcPS1tsumipo1_500Regardless of the gods you say you follow,
we all share in a common destiny:
“From dust you’ve come, to dust you shall return”.
Like Him, we too shall die, Life’s pressing question
becomes…how shall we live?  How shall our lives
this day respond to death’s reality,
and answer to Life’s strident invitation
to leave all of our privilege and status,
and turn from lives marked for success and promise,
and turn from some potential undefined,
and turn from false things that we think are true,
and let go of wealth, power and consumption,
and deny that false god:  accomplishment
and dare to love our enemies with candor
and dare embrace the heady risk of peace
without one stray thought of self-preservation,
take courage to live for the sake of others
and for the sake of Him who shows this way,
the way thru death, the way of blood and ashes,
will we walk in valiant hope in dust and ashes?

We can sing our songs
of life in dust and ashes
and thus return to God
our dust redeemed.tumblr_mujjr2KMSj1sohz2fo1_500

That Effigy

Posted on by

1

after you’re dead, there’s a funeral, red.
i discovered this recently, except i wasn’t
invited to show up, new, old or otherwise.

in my place was piled up wood, grey,
and lotsa brush all crackly-brown,
a stand-offish, prickly thorny-crown.

they set that half-truth fire blazing and incendiary,
mis-remembers and other (missings) hidden inside
curses, excuses, judgements of indigo echoing depth.

they thought me bound and captive but epithets
were synonymous with white-washed choices made-unmade,
were effigies hanging in flames, in smoke, in spirits.

then that noose just snikked up tight around their heart
like a golden curtain drawn but never rising on a play
written and rehearsed but never actually performed.

just as that funeral, red, was really never
held for me, but just that phantom never-was,
that effigy.

tumblr_njpw2tnYY41tbkr3io1_1280

…And Thus Find Rest Forever

Posted on by

3

delicate pink porcelain
abilities encased
in steel cold and smooth.
my heart recoils in sorrow…
and I sheath them in velvet
red and lined with gold brocade,
those porcelain abilities
trapped in cruel grey steel.

a monolithic aggregate
of standards, expectations
and end results I cannot meet
no matter how I try
it’s never good enough!

If I do miracles and magic,
nurture hearts and raise morale
in stony grounds and ice cold hearts
it’s just what is expected from me,
normal, uncommented on
and there I languish, emptied
and so hollow in the birth.

And the Bible tells me one thing
but the world flat contradicts Them
and my weary heart befuddled
goes to Stockholm for a moment
and agrees with the accuser
and I’m falling then, I’m tumbling,
falling, turning in the dark and formless void.

But Mama says I must not wallow
but must strip away the velvet red,
and let Her cut away the steel
and touch the porcelain inside
for life, for love, for others
and thus find Her rest forever.PaWT3El

C’est pas grave…

Posted on by

0

C’est pas grave…
Si j’ai le cœur en lambeaux
Les yeux en sanglot
Les joues chamallow
Et la voix lamento
Presqu’une épave…

C’est pas grave…
Si l’amour s’enfuit
Si le jour se prend pour la nuit
Si l’hiver encore me poursuit
Si le diable me séduit
Je ne serai pas son esclave…

C’est pas grave…
Quand le ciel me tombe sur les pieds
Que je me sens abandonnée
Que ma plume perd sa volupté
Que mes mains sont désarmées
Je continuerai à jouer les braves…

tumblr_ncb0y0bE531s8uwpyo1_1280
Mystic4Ever
Le 25 Novembre 2012

Since I Heard That I Was Dead

Posted on by

3

It’s been a hard five days
since I heard that I was dead.

So many people dream
of being at their funeral,
well I heard about mine
second hand and I am haunted,
underneath dark skies and dusk
by those deeds done distant,
done in his name
by those who do not know me
or have ever even met me.tumblr_m9yv6hMj3R1rtitxmo1_1280alas, there lies that caterpillar
faithful in the inches
and persistent in the scrunches
when life was deaf to all request
and death carried school lunches.
And silken shrouds so empty,
that chrysalis completed,
a parachute no longer needed or desired
has been laid to rest so gentle
in my mind and heart and soul.

But what is that small worm to them?
A giant? Tall and towering?
A person real and powerful?
Or personage unworthy
who must be tolerated
until the 18th birthday
when silence can take shape
and lay down thick on all?Molly MendozaA funeral…I thought those things happened
to those of brilliant value,
to those who are missed greatly
and mourned so in their absence…
certainly that news of loss
comes at me with such great surprise
because long silences took over
space and time so long ago
when conversation died and lives
were lived beneath unknowing clouds
of mute decisions made in secret
and consequences suffered
in pig styes in strange lands.tumblr_mfhgssIGJl1qjr7k7o1_r2_500I guess it leaves me rivven most,
the fact that I am not yet met,
or even known, or even thought worth knowing.
Nay, as I flutter on this twig
and let my wings dry out and strengthen
in the niggling sun, I am accosted
by their past and held accountable
for the willing spinning
and cocooning of my future
that the inchworm made for me.tumblr_n5s4s9FkHc1tq7o0to1_1280And in this time
my throbbing heart
was struck a blow
surprising and so shocking,
and she flew to make things right.
But while I prayed for her,
I found it beyond comprehension
that I would ever be seen
or noticed as the wonder that I am,
or even noted when I am
at last released from these bright wings…
even a shrug is more
than I can conjure up in hope so unrequited.

Five days…hard.
since I heard that I was dead.tumblr_nf93uaLmkp1qzcq51o1_1280

 

Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?

Posted on by

0

Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?.

Constance, I hope this morning finds you well.  I also hope you will read Susan’s article in response to a letter she received on her blog.

I am posting it here because of the relevance of the attitudes of the correctors…not necessarily as a comment on the issue itself.

You see, I too have been victimized by people who say things like those referred to in this article:  I have had it hurled into my face by those who tell me with a straight face that it is their obligation to out me to others and comment on my transition to them (before I even have the chance myself to say a word to people who are unaware of my choice and the journey to that choice)…and then comes the coup de gras:  “If I don’t take this stand then your blood is on my head!”

Did you catch that?  I am deprived of my own chance to speak for myself in the name of being “loved”, and then told that the one “loving” me with such betrayal is doing so to avoid having my “guilt” attributed to them!!

So love is involved…but it is not love of me…it is also not love of the person they are gossipping about me to (yes, it is gossip)…the “love” that is in operation here is the love of self, which is idolatry.

Christians who violate other people in the name of love are simply practicing the sin of idolatry.

Susan comments very well on this subject…take a look.

And then consider a novel thought:  allowing God to be God and the One and Only True Knower of the Hearts of Human kind, and taking your place on level ground the moral equal of ones that you have judged and judge wrongly.

Do justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.tumblr_mnw8oxlzn11qapjp8o1_500

Oh Brazil! You Never Knew Me!

Posted on by

4

Landscape of Disruption and thick Decadence
washing ever over me in those thin emerald waves
teal and deep blue, muddy yellow and tan.

Your streets of light and music,
aimless, drifting bacchanalia bright and colorful
snaking through the throngs teaming
and strong smell of no limits but your streets
of cluttered trash and timorous times and eyes looking
pleading pits of hopeless wincing and no pity present,
just despair metastasizing monstrous and insidioustumblr_n4kvt2P0ug1r312weo1_1280

You never knew me.  You looked at my surface
you thought me shallow and giddy.
You missed that shredding heart tested. Yes!  I said it!
Tested in your dismissive glance.tumblr_nixz2eBG9t1t170o4o1_1280Well, my glance is not shallow or naive,
my heart is shrewd and assessing and my eyes are clear and courageous
in the maelstrom of fear and fascination as I walk your streets…
and they walk me as well

streets of flowers and perfume, streets of plenty piled perfect,
exquisite in their rich opulent promises
and other streets too, decorated
with tarp-roofed hovels masquerading as houses
and sex-crazed humans masquerading as homes
and lost souls writhing in streets with no roof at all.tumblr_n8tx1i70Ez1stoo0qo1_500And you distrusted me!
You called me threatening and treacherous,
and your gimlet eye wide and white
glinting with ignorance and fear
but really just too damn lazy to make the effort
to climb inside this sleek white skin God borned me in,
this suburban Illinois pelt from streets
with singular but uniformly similar looking
roofed houses, with more than enough food, clothing,
and resources to meet needs and wants…
no.  You never looked deeper.
You never gave me a second glance.
Oh Brazil, I never had a freaking chance!tumblr_nhf2qs1kUr1r2zs3eo1_500

You are too comfortable in your schizophrenic status quo
to see me, different on the inside than I am on the outside,
too confident you are one and known…
to yourself and others…
keep telling yourself that comforting untruth.

but you are just like me
and you don’t even know it!
You never knew it.
Will you ever?
Know it?tumblr_nj0rcte80F1s3isy6o1_1280You with your rivers merry and feeding your heartland
and used for all things at once?
bathing…defecating…washing…drinking…
(and I am the polluted one?)

You with your monkeys quick and mischievous
and your giant wads of sloth hung lazy in the lush trees
verdant and slow…unaware, unaffected, unbothered…

You…pet monkeys and parrots in the midst of poverty and pleasures
and the never ending search for food or other treasure
in dirt and filth, in gold and glitter.tumblr_n9ylszk87k1t2ulawo1_1280Oh Brazil!  You never knew me!
You never tasted the blood I gave you
in laughter and singing and abounding smiles,
in unspeakable desolation and despair,
shriven of hope for a moment and too close to the cold…
I bled while you merely blinked blankly.

Well, I survived, no thanks to you.
I moved on before you could fall from trees
or sneak in windows or bite my soft arms
with hard beaks and bright feathers.
Oh, you left your forever marks
but I am still myself within my pulsing heart,
I am still and always will be red…
red red RED against the backdrop of your
splashy showy palette…and you so puzzled in my singularity.

Well I like it, red…I like me!  And I walk on
my head held high and face into the wind
and I am unencumbered by your war and free
but alas for you, Brazil, alas!
Though I know you, you never knew me.tumblr_niuw130dds1ruxmcho1_500

That Infernal Scale

Posted on by

0

“On a scale of 1 to 10,
how would you rate
your pain today?”

attempts to understand
and manage dirty pain
only cause more
pain (slivers and shards growing like crystals)

that daily dun-brown inquiry
into ourselves seizes us,
the hot buzz sting
of the growing awareness
of mortality….
aggravates deeply (pain)

more than I could say

and redly amplifies
the original stark question.

what if you answer 10
at 3 AM
but by the afternoon…
what then?
what of the futile measurement?
what of the meaningless guess
and what of the meaning-haunted guesser?
adding mortal insult
to immortal injury (pain).

Morality whispers of a wrongness
to pain
but I have wondered why
we think pain recognizes morality.

That’s the real question, innit?
Why we think there are
floors and ceilings
in the house of pain.

So in the hard and hopeless
of the darkness before dawn
we sit between these moments
when all things are defined
and that infernal scale
is shattered by the triumph
of pain held to the standard
at last made manifest
revealed first on a cross
and then revealed
set free
of scales, of measurements,
of guesses in the night, while
golgotha gasps and grasps
futilely at our cloaks
that we have shed as winter
surrenders to Sweet Spring.

That Spring
That 1 and 10
Ever Spring.

tumblr_ndlsxs48fH1tcmbwlo1_500

Silken Tears: Written in the memory of Leelah Alcorn

Posted on by

5

i saw her there, in the dark woods,
so fair of movement, fair of face
she walked beneath the milky moon
and bathed in silken light like lace.

she glowed with beauty’s blessing kist
upon her brow, but knew it not
for hatred choked her slender throat
and in its death grip she was caught.

i ran to her, and called her name
my voice it was a whippoorwill
my voice a falcon stark and shrill
i called her name in terror-trilltumblr_nhbo5yvqs21sqba70o1_500

but she could not hear me approach
her, buried under long reproach
so cut off from a future hope
and bound by hate’s black biting rope

so I just stood beside her there
just her and me, her broken stare
and dirges echoed through the night
and she in tragic silken light…

and then she ran straight to the moon
it rushed at us!  alas, i swooned
upon the snowy cold fields fair
and when i woke, she was not there tumblr_nbehmpPs4v1smipnlo1_500

i asked the owls and talked to trees
and heard the moon had stooped so near
had come down to grant her release
from stony hearts and hatred’s sneer…

so now i haunt those woods, those vales
and listen hard inside the night
in case a singer runs for me
as i to her ran desperately

but silence croons so clear and cold,
the lonely moon is wreathed in gold
so distant, never drawing near
to where we stood in silken tears.LeelahEdit

Dread and Presences

Posted on by

5

Dread.

I feel it still.
Laying

at the base
of my throat
and throbbing dully,
quietly slumbering

with one leering eye
cocked open always
and leaning towards
my heart.

My heart…
chipped and worked,
touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers
of dread and

shards of it lay scattered
at my feet clear,
jagged glimmering
broken.tumblr_nf01s3Hemc1sjr8bdo1_1280

I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering, but
2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.

It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.

I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could.

It was a year
without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.

There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured
by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just
the fog behind and the early dark
ahead awaiting dawn.

and Dread

and my heart shaped
in its cold hands
and God’s Warm Heart.

Across the prow of my ship
the rain slants and glints
in the deck lights (dark lights)
like silvery needles
sent to stitch
the past and future
together in this moment.

I think of Presences.

Emptiness…
Nothing…
Silences…
Absences…

Love…
Memories…
Hope…
Them…

there and here with me
in time and triumph,
tears and tragedy
but only One
does my heart
awaken in this dawn
and set afire tears
upon my face

a God of grace,
a God of love,
a God of…justice?

Justice.
I don’t even know where
to start with that!

I face forward
into dawn’s early light

empty,
confused,
seeking,

the way of grace
not effort!

Image 001

This Brilliant Indifference

Posted on by

1

tumblr_nh5lyiZ6JT1qgk7mfo1_500I am a childe of dark, a childe of light.

I was born beneath the shining moon
but just outside it’s golden touch
there, on dim green meadows blanketing
the warm red earth in comfort midst the singing dark and stars.

I was born upon the stones that radiate residual heat
as they remember blazing suns so brilliant beneath that blue sky
that blankets those same meadows green and glorious in the day
but now those stones lay bare in the cold night, as I am bare as well, uncovered.

I was born in darkness, and outside
looking in upon the singing stars
hung in night sky velvet-soft and sable
surrounded by splendors from some lost fable.tumblr_mhw41fyY9F1s3ik60o1_500

Outside.

I was born outside the secret knowledge that every other person seems to have
of just how goddam dull and ordinary everything around them “really is”.  I mean
just look at them, shining so brilliant each day and acting like it’s only night!  I see
their flaming hearts a-fire and blazing but they just trudge by feeling bored, uptight.

I watch events unfold and want to sing in joy and caper!
But when I open up my heart and shout and point in wonder…
well, those fish eyes turn and stare and those mouths gape and mock, hung open
and I am named too much, inglorious and out of order…out of order…out of order.tumblr_n8rdf9rMDR1sbg1lmo1_1280

Childe dwelling in the swelling dark of gloomy bored indifference
Childe dwelling midst the dazzle vast and glory of a day

(just One Day that unfolds brand new
over and over and over and over and over
Full, expressed complete miraculous
in every single same lily white
in every single same bird flight
in every single whispering wind
that echoes ever over the same ever different waters bright)expansion-by-paige-bradley

I am a companion with no company to keep because I’m
elated and afraid,
curious and fearful,
confused and wide awake
and seeing all around me
the marvels that they fail to see

(or rather, what they see and call the same?
the same ole same ole same ole same ole same
and let the repetition rob them of the vision
and leave them drunk and sober but
out of proper phase for when intoxication
is called for in this moment and when sobriety is come
to sing us back at last to proper sanity).tumblr_nh5isnxmlS1rk1cbbo1_1280

And on the cusp of Dark and Light I’m homeless in the day, the night,
homeless and repudiating that blank stupor of disinterest
that surrounds me…tries to drown me, pull me in it’s vicious grip
and trap me in its undertow of

violence unfolding
suffering repeated
oppression and injustice
become mere background noise
to serenade those bored yawns
and sighs of such indifference
that boredom has become
a way of life.

Out of phase (childe of dark)
and out of synch (childe of glad day)
delighting in monotony…
another walk beneath beauty…
another page before I sleep…
do it again! do it again, God!
another minute sharing hearts
because our moment is delight
alas…this childe born but belonging
not to day and not to night.tumblr_naka9qSUsT1thqgeao1_1280

 

Suicide Strikes Again

Posted on by

6

Constance…this appeared on my Facebook feed…I am distraught.

***********************************************************************************

Leelah was a 17yo ‪#‎trans‬ girl who just committed suicide. Rejected by her Christian parents. Put through reparative therapy. Her suicide note is below.

(Yes, it’s a verified real story. This post is from the City Councilman. Leelah is misgendered in news reports and images say “beloved son.” Love your kids, no matter who they are.)

10882203_10152890370433559_4919673113361989723_n
Chris Seelbach

Some very sad news to share.

Yesterday, a 17-year old committed suicide by jumping in front of a semi on I-71 near the South Lebanon exit.

It has come to light that this person likely committed suicide because she was transgender.

While Cincinnati led the country this past year as the first city in the mid-west to include transgender inclusive health benefits and we have included gender identity or expression as a protected class for many years….the truth is….it is still extremely difficult to be a transgender young person in this country.

We have to do better.

By reading her letter, Leelah makes it clear she wants her death to, in some way, help “trans civil rights movements.”

Please join me in making a donation (investment in our trans kids) right now to TransOhio.

Invest by clicking here: http://www.transohio.org

SUICIDE NOTE
If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.

Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in… because I’m transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally “boyish” things to try to fit in.

When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.

My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.

When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.

I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.

So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.

At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week.

After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.

That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please.

Goodbye,

(Leelah) Josh Alcorn

Advent Poem: The Season of Loneliness

Posted on by

2

Unbidden,
moving like mist in mountains
slow and fast and slow and long,
and lingering, white laced in grey,
and crawling, clinging to ramparts
and ridges that stand
strong and stark and still
catch an occasional ray of sun
from outside…but dimming
as the sun retreats before
the darkness of the night
that rushes over everything
with recollections
haunting,
isolating,
obliterating
sight.

Unknown,
vaporous,
real but irresistible and arising from…
*moan*…
and meaning…
*sob*…

climbing,
clinging,
clutching
clouding out,
shutting out
shouting out
solid rock stable and holding hands
reeling, cavorting, swirling

Undoing,
settling down on everything
and growing quiet,
and gaining in gravity
and growing heavy,
and draining memory
of every drop of blood
until everything
is overwhelmed and overtaken
and surrounded in the silver
of the dull fogs of what once was
and alas will never ever be again.

Alone,
in fields, waiting,
staring at the skies
so clear and so occluded,
every loss hung there bright brilliant
on deep black skies never ending,
every sorrow there is twinkling,
every hurt is glowing blinking there
so merry, so unyielding,
I gaze upon my starry constellations
of great loss and ruination
marking time and pointing steady
so unchanging in this night…

Cold,
missing home,
missing that place (and time)
where all things hushed and gathered
noisy in a deafening din,
all collected, full, o’erflowing
from my tender heart within
the very center of the moment
in the Advent Season Present
bathed in wonderful quick joy.

Real,
that place then but lost now in my mind
(like ridges and ramparts now submerged).
The sheep rustle restless
and underneath their bleating
I hear the sound of bleeding
in the heart of living memory
of hearth and home now pierced
and rent and disappearing…
and I wait here,
lonely in this mist and overcome,
hunkered down but kissed and left so numb
as I recall the bliss of Christmas past
and have no hope of Merry Christmases
to dawn and to me come.

Winds,
well they exist,
and they do blow!
Cleansing from the North
and from the south they flow
in warmth and restoration,
dispelling every fog of gloom
and routing every hurtful memory
that ever happened.
I fix my gaze on that One Star,
that portent bright, surpassing
all the mocking, twinkling titters
of the past its reminders constant.

Here,
in the season of loneliness
my lonely Advent heart
echoes that loneliness that lingers
there inside the heart of God
and so we yearn, together, aching
in the lonely moments waiting
perfect timing of those winds
to blow away the mists
and let that mountain shine again
in solid clarity and splendour promises
that someday the Divine Loneliness
and human grieving longing
will be overcome by
Faith and Hope and Love.

Grace,
and peace,
in the season of loneliness,
Love, Charissa

tumblr_ncjmcsAsi01tw2qkpo1_400

always ever treasured

Posted on by

7

in the silent moments,
when nothing speaks
(you did know that, didn’t you?
Nothing speaks.
Have you not heard its voice?)

and to stopper its relentless words
my mind goes elsewhere,
and I wander back thru pages of the days
and chapters of the years
and past volumes of the decades
until I stop at last
in children’s books well thumbed
and read nearly to death.

it is there I see you still,
and in your running laughter
released and giggly grasping
our guts in gales of mirth.

i see your eyes unguarded,
your innocence intact,
your trust still whole, unshattered
unsullied by grief’s touch.

I see your wispy curls, I see your toothless grin,
I hear your nonsense singing always
and you there, secrets within and harbored deep and lonely
I see you there within.

you cannot know how I feel, here
now…because the books won’t open
into your life unlived and yet to be discovered.
Well…you could believe and listen
when I reach out wholehearted
and full of love to give
and wanting to redeem all
that depression ruined
and self-loathing polluted.

lovelies I was always there
though trapped so deep inside!
I was shipwrecked just as you
when you felt choked by your hometown
well I was dying in my body
smothered in its horror.

The present yous swim into view
and lay yourselves upon
the little yous there innocent,
those brand new perfect yous
and I see at the same time
the spectrum of your beings
in scintillating sharpness
so smudged by separation
and blurred by longing tears.

I see your cold and austere looks
I hear your voice demanding
your questions stark, commanding

“what does your flaw have to do with me?  What is your point?
So you suffered, big deal! Worse, you broke me mangled, mutilated
folded spindled, permeated all the air I ever breathed
with your dysphoric world!

“I was not given a choice! If I was, it would not be you!
so just step back, just go away and fade into the pages back
before our volume started, we are now ever parted”.

But as I said…they cannot read into their future
those pages remain stuck together, gummy in a messy wad
of yet to be determined, yet to there be written
in the blood of choices made and in the ink of voices raised
to speak of deeper things…or not.

regardless, I can still take out those books
and thumb the well worn pages
and read the much loved stories
of long lost wholesome glories.
and I will always love my babies there so cherished
and kissed and ever treasured, ever, ever treasured
always ever treasured.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

 

Leaning Hard Against That Night

Posted on by

9

icicles hung glittering clear,
they shot diamonds, mercury bright
and gleams refracting morning light
they hid the horrid crime that happened
in the cold and dark black night…icicle

how can people do it, say it?
well, last night the deed was done
beneath clouds scuttering wet and rainy
(like my covers wet with tears,)

it will be done again you know,
but only lonely dead will weep
and they are dead…so that leaves just
the children crying in the cold
and hungry violence of the night.

that hand groped blind and deaf, and reached
for icicles hung in the dark,
all light drained dry and swallowed down
fear’s greedy gullet, sucked into
the belly of the raving beast. IMG_6829

that tongue, fearsome and cleaved in twain
and mute, waggling helplessly
between those fearful gnashing teeth
it fluttered, spit, stuttered and hit
with lies, with bitter accusations
comforting and crooning.

the disembodied hand snapped off
that cold icicle, that one that
the red light of Mars’ distant eye
unblinking, licked, caressed and sharpened,

then the hand floated across
the room so dark and thick with terror,
while some choked disembodied voice
muttered Mene, Mene, Teqel, Upharsin
and I knew I was a wall
and it the hungry writer, and
then it fell in fierce red streaks,
such icy strokes of death tattooingbloody_icicle_by_achmedxd-d37863p

“unclean!”     “beware!”     “mind-whore!”

my blood was its gory ink
and my heart was its inkwell, screaming
as it wrote again, again,
it wrote again, til I drained dry,
lay still, eyes glassed and blindly staring
at the black sky spinning, fading
from my view while that night faded
into grey dawn streaked with crimson
bursting full into today.

I woke up and found my face
was wet, and thank god it was just
my tears and not my blood, but wait…
my eyes were caked, dry, rimed with salt
and sleep…the clammy wet was really
that icicle and the secret
kill it keeps inside its melty
hungry heart so ravenous
and never satisfied or sated,
just drunk on my blood and terror,
drunk on me, so feared and hated.
icicle (1)

i died last night…but in my dreams,
so there is not a corpse remaining
and the murder weapon melted
(they always do in dreams, you know)
and so the killer walks the earth
so smug and lily pure and knowing
that the sprawling feast is now
secure and safe and once again

the killer sings out

“all is well inside the city!”

walls so high, so white, so white,
just like the cliffs of Dover standing,
leaning hard into that night.

6082354


Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson

Posted on by

13

Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson.

Crying so hard that it took this sacrifice:  this child sacrifice in order for

these pitiable people to realize something about God…

He does not ever require us to sacrifice our children to Him, because He has already given Jesus to us who chose to be our sacrifice of love.

Listen…make it really easy:  you are not God.  Thus, your one and only job here  in the earth is to Love Them, Love your neighbor, and be kind.  Believe it or not, God really can get thru to people…way better than you can.

And pray that it doesn’t take something like this for you to see clearly.

 

Radio Silence (by anon., guest poster on Grace Notes)

Posted on by

3

Dear Constance…I was graced today with the cry of a heart great.  A heart beautiful, a heart that can be held in a hand but not contained by the sea.

This heart sent me this poem, this offering of love, longing, sorrow and pain.  Such is the way of life.  Such is often the way of a world broken and not as it should be.

So…read please?  And feel it.  And then know that the “ought not to be” is proof that One Day comes…and a righting of all wrongs, and a healing of all wounds and Restoration of the Breach will be, will be, will be…

 

I die a little every day
With you so far away
Three months it’s been since I talked to you,
And two months for your sister too
Big brother says he can’t do it
and the youngest seems oblivious
And so I die a little every day
and you so far away

Daily each of you will do
whatever it is you do
you eat, you sleep, you work or play
but I hear not a word
you say it’s too hard to talk about
and that you hate being on the phone
I call it radio silence
and each day when
there has been
not a word, not an email, not a message
death takes another nibble

Today I die a little more
I see no end in sight
i thought that if I acted cool,
you possibly, you could you might
return to me, to us and then
you’d share your life ,your love again
and some “boring” daily doings.
But instead I feel the deadness grow
in the place where you once lived.
And so
I die a little every day
With you so far away.

tumblr_neoit1Qs1k1s2z59jo1_500

This is me…

Posted on by

7

tumblr_ncp6pzyGM61s2qfr9o1_1280

this is me, inside my heart, my soul cupped in my hands
and lifted high in graceful beauty unto heavenly lands,
this is my spirit, beautiful and yielded in my place
on sacred prayer mat made of love and tears and joy and grace.

but this is that me, seen, encountered, clumsy in this world,
the way i am perceived and felt, the heated judgments hurled,
hard and horned, coarse and dull, imprisoned in my place,
of silence, sorrow, empty house, tears always on my face.

Bisonbulle(Bison Bull)

May I Forget To Breathe Again

Posted on by

4

it’s been 25 years, every one a chapter in a book
filled with pages written in words
of surprise and heavenly gifts everyday.

i remember the first, that morning walk,
clammy fog swirling round my face
while inner fogs cleared.

breezes of heaven blew bright and fresh
teaching me to unwrap carefully, faithfully
everyday and hearing that free giggle/laugh.

and then i unveiled me (alas), to us all (me included)
and discovered that i had unwrapped that gift and was done…finished
and revealing my own irrelevance, current, future.

another chapter ended yesterday, another one begun,
passing and being born without a word from me (1st time ever),
at least, not one outloud, lest the universe take offense in silence.

but i remembered, all day long.  i always do, you know.
and i sang, i cried, my tears washed my love
so my love could clean hold you secret and unseen.

i am sorry, love…i am.  i know i was ruination,
a blight on years meant to resonate and not
rot in futile failed half-built huts.

but i will never sorrow o’er that day, that moment
when Heaven spoke and told me of Their gift,
and my heart was blessed forever after.

i remembered, all day long…and sang.
If i ever forget, may my hand forget to live,
and may i forget to breathe again.

tumblr_nfhmahJhnO1tubkf6o1_1280

Ελεγεία της παιδικής ηλικίας

Posted on by

7

when did it happen,
that twizzle dazzle
Rochambeau during which
you twinkled and tap-danced
from our wordy
hot tub merry
and full of laughing waters
to the river swift,
grey and roiling
thru the locks
and around the island
on the way
to the stormy seas
so vast and voiceless?

you used to
babble like brooks
and I used to
bathe in that
Ponce de Leon flow
eternal and new

(did you not know this?)

and drink of the wine everlasting,
drink of the young perfect you…

today I was down there,
at that creekbed
and it was just
full of dead leaves
that were dank
in stagnant pools
and crackly disappearing
whisps where that
bed was bone dry
and empty of water
and of music
and of laughter.

i miss you so bad…
so bad.
and in these times
it’s impossible
to keep hope alive
without a sop
to my thirst for you
and your fresh vibrant
open and happy face.

tumblr_n7qm29lnjW1qllucco1_1280

Reeling in Rome

Posted on by

7

Things feel like silk over thistles.
My heart is home, snuggled down
certain…in place…and yet underneath
being home pulses pain, sighs and sorrow,
sings sadness…tambourine thistles,
timbrel thorns tipped with sting and with sticker
tipped with grief for the meanness released
in this world, cacophonous, clanging
macabre symphony wailing and keening
and it easily pierces my thin certain silk
tumblr_mzyfu4DB7Q1r4mbs9o1_1280

it is here, in this place…home…
where I am snuggled down certain…
…it’s here too, crept ‘neath walls of love
we raised higher (longer) than the Dragon
and broader than the Icy Bear.

…meanness dissolved…

(become smoke from cauldrons stirred
by darkness and tended by sneaking death)

crept under, around, thru, in vapors
breathed in gasps, poisonous, choking
off health, flowing life from even the elect

(oh Mama, could it be?  Say it isn’t so!)

me and my heart met and we mingled
and made our nest in walls of love,
in temple tones, rhythms so homey
and consecrated with Sacred Love…

but cuckoos crept in on the croaking
raucous dissonant din of black crows,
under safe and the sacred, they sought to steal, thieving
and taking goodness and life, and leaving our chicks

(our heart our heart our heart our heart)

torn and rent by meanness and scratched by claws
and marred and us

(married)

hands fluttering, hands wringing…hands empty

I am reeling here, snuggled down solid
I am reeling…tipping to and fro,

rocking…keening

as I look and long for that imagined future
we dreamed of for our dearest chicklings

(because my own, miscarried misshapen,
deadly-still and sightless in Gaza)

as I look and I long but I see only smoke
and haze, and I hear only laughing, gibbering
vaporous voices blown off cold cauldrons,
stirred by stale darkness, filled with green poison and
witches brew swirling and reeling…
reeling like me.

Mama…oh Mama do You see?
do you hear me here, bereft,
weeping in Ramah with Rachel
for my hatchlings hounded, harried,
torn and carried away
on torrents in time, in tears,

to tarry, to tarry, reeling in Rome
when they should be settled
joyous in Jerusalem
and glad singing.

Oh Mama…oh Mama

(my face slick with tears and my heart reeling in Rome).Image 001

 

Kate Von Roeder Death: Transgender Woman Leaves Heartbreaking Suicide Note On Facebook

Posted on by

3

Kate Von Roeder Death: Transgender Woman Leaves Heartbreaking Suicide Note On Facebook.

Constance…I’m shattered.

This was me…very nearly me.

Read her note…I have felt, said and lived

every.

single.

one.

of.

those.

things.

I beg you, please, show mercy to all around you, especially the most broken.

Charissa…emblem of Mama’s love

 

photo of Kate Von Roeder

The Temptation of Nationalism

Posted on by

10

Dear Constance…

I have had an experience that has unsettled me today.  I want to share it, find out from you if this is a common experience for you online, and make an exhortation to you as readers here.  Okay?     🙂

So…I stopped by a site that I enjoy, one I visit regularly as I am delighted by the content on a nearly daily basis.  This morning, drinking my early coffee and thankful for an easy day on vacation with nothing to do but write, ride my bike, and see my naturopath (all systems go!  Yaaayyy!!), I stopped in there…

…and read a lil nugget which I since discovered was a headline from a news feed and presented as a “found poem” (I have those, but never in headlines!  Mine are usually lurking in wind chimes and waterfalls, mists and moonlight, meadows and mountains)…and then said headline was added to something that I later had defined to me as “just a fact”.

Aside:  Constance, is there such a thing as “just a fact?”  or “just a fact?”  What was meant by it, I think, was that it was a common bit of information that everyone knows is so.  Certainly mathematical values are true…maybe facts?  “Fact” is defined as “a thing that is indisputably the case.”  Now, there is at least the fact that we all do find foundational the notion of an absolute truth…even those who argue there isn’t.  Just tell them they are silly and you don’t need to listen to them because they are right, there is no absolute truth except for that they stand on when teaching us there isn’t any!  Giggle…even to ditzy me it is obvious that this is a self-defeating rhetorical position.  So yeah, we do know there are facts, but here is the complication:

“Facts” are perceived and interpreted by human beings…with a particular point of view in a particular historical context and a particular life experience!  When you assert to a person, in the effort to validate your p.o.v. or your argument, that it is “just a fact”, you have stepped out onto ice that is deceptively thin and treacherous  There are countless ways that this can be falsified.  One merely has to think back to historical times when it was “just a fact” that the sun revolved around the earth, or that witches always floated.

Or let’s be close and contemporary:  a white middle class male might very earnestly assure a black economically challenged male that it is “just a fact” that the police are your friends.  Interview nearly any black male regardless of class, and you will discover that their “fact” is that the police are definitely not your friends.

My point is not that there are no facts, but rather the use of such a phrase as shortcut thinking employed to dismiss the need to consider and apply much needed nuance.

As I read the lil nugget which was the combination of a so-called found poem and a headline there was a link to the story the headline was about…except that the link took me to a political document designed to draw attention to the ways that educators were being treated unjustly (in this person’s point of view, likely also definitely just a fact(s).)  Which puzzled me even more.

But it was after, on the comments that followed, that my heart was increasingly hurt and distressed, and I was filled with a hurt and disappointment…I think mostly with myself, as I had attributed a much higher level of discourse and orientation to this place than I was seeing.  I was disillusioned, and this was my own fault.

Snarkiness and that odd form of inside-the-group glee that seems to take over with groups as they can “other” some other people group, nation, social class, spirituality, or you name it.  We see it most commonly happen with issues of race, and issues of nationalism.  And I am absolutely undone as I watch intelligent people who would never ever broad brush one another glibly and without thought get carried away in the comments.

Of course, a group that I am a part of by birth was the butt of the derision, and of course I felt hurt.  But I was not hurt that the put downs and one-ups-manship was directed at the group I was born into…rather it pained me to see what I had thought was an intelligent and sensitive person with a far more open hearted orientation to people on the basis of their humanity slowly emerge to me over the day as more deeply entrenched as a nationalist thinker than I had imagined.  Not once prior to today had the person’s nationalistic membership occurred to me.  I don’t recall if I ever saw anything like this in the comments, which I read due to the witty and sensitive replies by the site administrator.

I wrote in, expressing my surprise and dismay, expecting (naively, apparently) that the person would consider my comments and moderate their own.

Instead, I got one of those cut and paste emails (you know the ones, right?), where my words were pasted back to me, and then the rebuttal to them proceeded with a cherry-picked interpretation of what I meant in what I wrote.

All in all, very distressing, and the clincher?  I had referenced my being transgender as an easy example of my broader point that it is far too easy and hurtful to judge people and groups by the labels attached to them…and the reply concluded that I was objecting to the misrepresentation of a whole nation on the basis of labels because this misrepresentation has happened to me because I am transgender.

In other words, it was not possible that it was wrong, and a violation of grace to broad brush a people group…no, I had the issues with it I had due to my deeper issues and past hurts.

OK:  Scene is now set.  You are up to speed.  Two points I wish to make:

First, I was stupid and naive to write and expect something different when the evidence was staring me in the face that the snarkfest was far too delicious to listen to a different take…bad on me.

But second…here at GraceNotes, if there is ever anything like this going on?  I will be gravely disappointed in you, Constance!  And even more gravely disappointed in myself, for being blind to it and allowing it to appear unchallenged or just flat out banned.

There is no place for that…times are too short and the issues are too grave with what we are about here, and the rewards for persevering in grace too grand to miss out on!!  I have come to know this readership as diverse, generous, intelligent, and above all united in the common determination to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly!  Comment after comment has proven this out.  Here, the broken, the outcast, the alien and stranger are not only welcomed and received, but honored and lifted up.

If this is not so…if I have ever, ever “othered” you, policed you, treated your feelings casually and dismissive, then I beg your forgiveness and want to dialogue with you so that I can apologize and then make restitution to your heart for such insensitivity on my part.

If I have ever placed my group, my country, my politics or spirituality over our common bond as human beings sacred and invaluable in our existence, then I was badly wrong, and out of tune with Them whom it is my greatest desire to represent with accuracy and fidelity.

I will tell you the rest of the story:  I turtled and ended the conversation.  I don’t have the stomach for debate when generalities and tropes are called facts and discourse and attentive respect are the currency buying deeper connection and relationship.  And I came over here to write about it, to write it out and think it thru.

Lol…my best friend tells me that I write things out and process my thinking by writing them out…

She smart.

She right!  lol.

Constance…please come here.  Please when you do know that we are here for joy, for grace, for progress in bringing light and banishing darkness…and above all as a place to grow, together.  Be diverse in your thought and opinion…we blind need each other’s piece of what the elephant is, and monolithic thought in almost any capacity is extremely dangerous to the discovery of Truth…

…but in the diversity of your thought, always be monolithic in your commitment to love, to do justice and love mercy, and to walk humbly!

In sorrow over the day’s distresses, and gratefulness for your shoulders to weep on and even snot on a lil.

Love, Charissa Grace

tumblr_n5hmllxZuo1sym2bco1_1280

What’s that noise?

Posted on by

0

A yawn?  A sigh?

A snort or hrrumph?

A grunt?

 

Or is it the roar and fury of towering indifference?

tumblr_n7imxeFYS41qllucco1_1280

Dedicated to the memory of Yaz’min Shancez

 

Suffragette of Sight

Posted on by

3

They leave marks, tears.  Look.
You can see them if you stand
eyes akimbo and uncrossed from normal.
They don’t show if you look usual-like.

But they shimmer
like living starry
liquid songs of sorrow
They sparkle in sideways-sight,
like limpid diamonds heaped

across the face of the earth.

Sometimes, if you walk around
with your eyes uncrossed
you will bump into people
that are invisible in this land,
the ones who choke their tear-spring
with furious fingers

so they don’t show up seeable.
They don’t glimmer and gleam.
Some sorrows are too deep,
so when this happens, you must

reach into your bag
and sprinkle them
with tear dust.

I’ve been practicing this
diagonal walk, shambling
hither and yon
whispering “Marco”
and straining to hear
the reply.

It’s like my
sonar of sorrow,
I guess,
to navigating
these strange seas
of lambent woe.

And I never wash my face anymore…
I have a theory:
let my tears dry
on my cheeks,
my lips, and they
will end up

tattooing my heart,
marking me Maori-like
as blessed, a
Suffragette of sight.

 science_of_tears

 

My Heart’s Dirge

Posted on by

0

I woke today,
again,
and sad.

Fingers clenched,
toes curled, and
palms scarred

by my fingernails’
cruciform
crescent tattoos.

Another day of longing…
wash, rinse, repeat.

I had hoped
that someone
would notice my pain,
feel my heartache,
care for my sorrow.
But no one did,
lost in their own
worlds of hurt.

I was glad and sad
when I declared in faith
and many liked that.

To encourage others is good.

But when I was open,
transparent,
silence held court and
there was nothing…
no words,
mute embarrassment at
my open vulnerable mewlings?
Distaste for naked cries?

No hand to take,
no smile to receive…

My Daddy told me,
when I was little,
and mourning

“Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep, and you weep alone.”
tumblr_np0l2kYa261qkb10mo1_1280
I always hoped
he was mistaken,
but I think
he must have
been right.

I’m gonna press on,
give my smiles,
my words,
my hands,
such as they are…

I’m stubborn that way,
I guess.

tumblr_n15dae9PXv1qlclkho1_1280